Loneliness is a place that I know well. It's the distance between us, and the space inside ourselves. ~ Annie Lennox

Loneliness.

I can remember feeling like I was going to die of loneliness when I was a teenage girl.  My family moved at such a crucial time in my life, just as I was entering into my teens, from a small town a few miles inland from the Pacific Coast to Vancouver, Washington, a small city of around 40,000 at that time, I think it was. It has exploded in the ensuing years to almost 175,000.  Must be a nice place to live, you think.  No. It wasn't.

I went to three junior high schools.

I went to three high schools.

Walking into a new school for the first time was agony.  I knew what was ahead of me.  Snickers. Snide remarks. Teasing.  No one to sit with in the cafeteria at lunch time.  At that age one of the most mortifying things you can do is choose an empty table on the first day, only to find out you've chosen the one the popular girls sit at.  And as they fill it up one of them tells you, "You can't sit here.  Go sit somewhere else."

What kills me is there are people who say the best years of their lives were those in high school.  I hadn't even made it there yet and I already knew I was doomed.

It's amazing how fast and how far a person's level of self-confidence can plunge in the very first week of junior high.  I went from being a very friendly, well-liked happy kid to withdrawing into my own little world.  And outside of my best friend Lizzie, I never ventured very far out of it until I graduated from high school.  I have told her many times that when I entered the class she was in on my first day at my second junior high, sat down behind her, and had her turn around and say to me, "Hi, my name is Liz.  Do you want to be my friend?" was one of the kindest things that ever happened to me.

High school...well.  It was ok.  I had given up on eating lunch a few years back and spent my lunch time in the library.  I tried disappearing in the halls.  I must have done a pretty good job of that because hardly anyone spoke to me outside of teachers.  I had one ask me in my Senior year, "Are you ok?  If you ever need anyone to talk to, you can talk to me."  OH, how I wish I could have!  But so much was going on at home and in my personal life...I yearned to talk to her, but I just couldn't.

Thankfully that wasn't the end of the story.

The night I graduated, when I'd gotten my diploma from my Home Room, I ran out to the spot where I was to meet my parents.  I was alone, and I twirled in a giddy circle and yelled, "I'm free!!!"

The very next day I started my 'adult' life.  I already had a job lined up at a hospital in Portland to step right in to, working in the Medical Records department.  Ironically, two girls who'd graduated with me had gotten jobs there too.  One was another quiet one like myself.  The other had been popular and on the rally squad and I was sure she wouldn't want anything to do with me.  The quiet one went about her business and stayed to herself, but...stranger yet...the cheerleader and I became pretty good friends!  I'll never forget her kind of peering at me one night and telling me, "You know, you had the reputation in high school of being the biggest snob in the world because you would never talk to anyone.  But you're not like that at all!"  That floored me.  "Stuck up?!  Cindy, I was petrified, I was so shy!"  Talk about a classic example of never judging a book by its cover.  I can laugh at it now.

I have found there's a vast difference between loneliness and being alone through my adult life.  After a busy younger life of raising my children, with them and the neighborhood kids having the run of our house, always welcome...to basically helping to raise my two grandsons while my son and his wife worked long hours...I craved alone time.  When I actually had some I didn't even know what to do with it.  But lonely?  No. Not at all. My life has been filled with lots of wonderful people and friends, once I stepped out into my adult life.  I had to learn to make my life what I wanted it to be.  I had choices I made. I've had mentors along the way. I had to let go of some things, and hold on to others. I had to dump a lot of emotional baggage that threatened to pull me down.  I had to take that young girl who thought of suicide so many times to give herself a good shake and get over it.  Self-pity gets you nowhere, and there were and are a lot of people out there who are a lot worse off than I ever was. Still...when you're young you don't know these things.  A young person's sense-of-self is so insular, so focused on them they can't see beyond the moment.

But there are lots and lots and lots of moments ahead.

There are dreams that come true.  There are prayers that are answered.  There are people who will love you, and you will love them.  There are good times.  There are hard times where you'll come out on the other side and feel blessed because you survived them.

You'll live, and you'll learn.